


Cans and Cannot's

by Fangtail528



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), Alternate Universe - Retail, Dave is know as the Can Bandit TM by everyone, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eridan is a Lazy asshole, F/F, He hates his life, In which Sollux knows who's vandalizing the cans the entire time and says nothing, Its open 24/7 and its hell, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a background thing with dave?? Its get discussed eventually but not for a really long time., he hates it even more now that some guy is drawing dicks on the canned hot dogs, i guess, its like, its like a coffee shop au except hellish, karkat works three 12 hour shifts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 07:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14015487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangtail528/pseuds/Fangtail528
Summary: In which Karkat works in a Safeway in the middle of fucking nowhere, and some asshole keeps drawing dicks on the hot dog cans.((This is my first fic, but it was too funny of an idea to not write))





	Cans and Cannot's

Today was a fucking slow day. Night. Whatever. Either way, it was slow, even for a monday night. About three people showing up kinda slow. There’s nothing for you to do besides making sure the cans and other things were in proper order. You still have another 8 hours for this shift, if things don’t start picking up in 10 minutes you’re gonna pull out you’re phone and start on that new romcom Kanaya got you.

You hear the automatic sliding door from across the store. Music starts playing, mid song, where it stopped when the last person left. You’re pretty sure Sollux only turns it back on at all because the store owners would get pissed otherwise. It may be midnight but you’re pretty sure he never sleeps. Then again, neither do you. Working three shifts was a bad idea. Past you was stupid, but you’re stuck with this now. Plus, getting $3000 a month makes it just a little less shitty.

Anyways, there's a person in here, so you should probably get back to the cash register. You don’t trust anyone else who’s working this shift to interact with other sentient beings properly. You finish putting the last can of soup on the shelf, and start heading back over to the register. When you see Aradia at the register already, you sigh. “Aradia. Why are you manning the register?” She gives you a grin before actually responding to your question. “Because you always man the register! I wanted to do it for a change!” For a moment, all you can do in response is sigh. “You do know that manning the register is mostly just standing around right?” She nods, the grin not dropping for an instant. You put your face in your palms before dragging them down your face. “You know what, fine, just don’t scare off the customers.” You wave your hand dismissively and walk to the back in order to get more of something to be stocked.

You push open the door to the stock and supplies room, surprisingly seeing sweaty muscular hoofbeast troll standing there holding a box. He should have been gone four hours ago. He starts sweating more as you enter. You sigh, for what must’ve been the millionth time today, even though it’s more like 10. “What’s in the box, Equius?” He just sweats more. You are rapidly losing patience. It's probably a good thing Aradia is manning the register. “Tell me what's in the box, you hoofbeast bulge sucking moron! ” You snap at him. “You better not be getting off on me telling you to do things.” He sweats more. You read the label on the box instead of waiting for him to answer. Pens. “Give me the fucking box.”

You take the box from him, carefully avoiding skin to sweater contact with the sweaty troll. You shove the swinging door open with your hip and head over to the stationary and writing supplies section. You set down the box pens when you arrive, and flip open the top of the box. Unsurprisingly, it's full of packs of three pens. They look to be the standard black color, so you move to put them away into their place on the shelf. You hear the door slide open and the music stop playing about halfway through putting the box of pens on their place on the shelf. You let out a sigh. Hopefully Aradia didn’t creep them out too badly. You finish up with the pens and head back into the box area. Thankfully, Equius has left. You grab the first box you can find, looking down at the labels. It's more soup. You carry it over to the canned food aisle and set it down. The sight that you behold is unholy. On every single can of canned hot dogs is a human dick drawn in red sharpie.

You stare for a moment of disbelief. Then, you get pissed. “Are you fucking kidding me?!?” You turn your gaze to the rest of the canned items. They all have something or other written on them. Multiple have comments on the type of soup. Mostly they say, ‘ew’ or ‘gross’ if they have vegetables in them. You call Aradia over. She stares for a moment before she bursts out laughing. “And what, Aradia, about this situation is funny?” You ask. She points at the human dicks for a moment before resuming her doubling over laughter. “It's just a bunch of human dicks drawn on some canned hot dogs! It's not even funny!” She whispers one word. “Weiners.” She bursts out laughing again. You slap your hands to your face and groan. Of course. Hot dogs, weiners, dicks, it all made sense now. You drag your hands down your face. “This still isn’t funny. I’ve got a bunch of unsellable canned foods here. What the grub-shitting fuck am I supposed to do with them!?” Your voice slowly grows in volume as you continue through the sentence, ending with you basically shouting.You swear you’re gonna strangle whoever did this. Aradia is still laughing, but stopping slowly. You pinch the bridge of your nose and exhale. “I’ve got to report this to the manager,” you say slowly. You grab one of the cans that doesn't have a dick or a swear word on it off the shelf. You stomp towards the manager’s office, leaving Aradia alone in the aisle. You arrive at the door and take a deep breath before you knock. You hear a muffled ‘Come in’ through the door, so you open it and take a step inside.

The office is small but cozy, and you feel yourself relaxing slightly once you’re inside. You address the manager William Vallen, WV for short. He’s a short, kind old black man who tried to talk you out of taking a third shift. Despite the fact that he couldn’t get past you to listen to you, you appreciate it immensely. “What is it, Karkat? You don’t usually talk to me without a reason.” You sigh and hold up the can. It's reads ‘EW’ in big letters over the label. “Someone vandalized the can food section. It's either stuff like this, or dicks pretty much.” He raises his eyebrows. “Why would they do that?” You set the can down on his desk before responding “I have absolutely no fu-,” You bite back a swear mid-sentence. Something about this guy just demands respect, and you have absolutely no objections to that. “No clue why they would.” You sigh after that and run a hand through your hair between your horns. “What should we do with the cans?” He gives you a soft smile. “As long as you mark out the inappropriate things, you can put them in a clearance area.”

You pick up the can on his desk and stare absently at the red marker on it. “Yeah, alright, I’ll try and get that done by the end of this shift.” You move to head out of his office, but stops when he continues speaking. “One more thing. Take the next shift off will you?” You turn back to face him. He has a small worried frown on his face. It’s a look you can’t say no to, even if you wanted to. “Yeah, okay.” Looks like you’re not going to work at all tomorrow. You’re hoping Eridan and Aradia can mange the whole store by themselves for the evening. You smile at WV before opening the door and exiting the office. You sigh again. That seems to be a running thing for today, sighing. You head back to the soup aisle. Aradia is standing there, examining a hot dog can with a dick on it. “WV said that we can just get rid of the inappropriate stuff on them and then put them on clearance.” You speak before she seems to notice. She nods, a small smile finding its way to her face. You move to take some of the cans off the shelf before you realize you have no way of actually moving them. You set the cans back on the shelf, and move to go back and get the large cart you use to move around large numbers of boxes at once. When you bring it back, You see Aradia is sitting on the floor surrounded by a low wall of cans on all sides. “Aradia, what are you doing?” She shrugs, before moving some of the cans around her onto the cart. You stare for a moment before starting to move them as well.

By the time you get most of the cans onto the cart, another customer enters the building, and the music starts up again. Aradia smiles, before leaving to hang out at the register. You finish up putting the rest of the cans that will fit onto the cart and roll it to the staff room. Unsurprisingly, Eridan is there, watching the human version of ‘In which a hemo-anon and a blue blood fall in love until the hemo anon leaves to find fortune and gets turned into a pirate and the blue blood believes he’s dead and is manipulated into a flush relationship with purple blood and the hemo-anon comes back to rescue her, revealing that he’s also a blue blood in the process.’ You think the human version is called Princess Bride. He looks over when you come in, before looking away, and then looking back again with a confused expression on his face. “What’s with the cans, Kar?” You pick one of the hot dog cans up and show it to him. “Some grub-fisted nook whiffer drew all over the fucking cans.” You state, not without some (okay a lot) of annoyance in your tone. “We can put them out as on clearance if we can cover up the dicks and swear words.” He nods. “Well, I guess you better get to it.” He turns to continue watching his movie.

You throw the can at the back of his head, speaking before he can complain. “No, you’re going to do your damn job and help me with this.” He rubs at the back of his head before pausing the movie. “Yeah okay fine.” He gets up from the small couch that's in front of the TV and heads over to where we keep the stickers that have the ‘Hello, my name is ___.’ on them. He comes back and hands you a stack. “It’ll be faster than trying to wipe off the sharpie.” Sometimes, Eridan can be slightly less of a wriggler brained moron than usual. Luckily, this is one of those times. You spot a silver sharpie on one of the nearby shelves. Looks like you’re writing in silver. You grab the pen and then pick up one of the vandalized (via swear word) cans and look it over to see if you can still read the label. It's a can of pea soup. You slap the sticker on and write it as such on the can in big, blocky silver lettering.

You repeat this until your phone starts ringing. You got maybe 30 or so cans done?  You pull out your phone and realize it's just an alarm you set at the start of this shift to remind you that you have two hours or so before you get to leave. You turn the alarm off and look over at Eridan’s work. He got 10 or so cans done, each labeled in flowing violet lettering. You sigh. “Eridan, you don’t need to make them fucking pretty, you just need to make it legible enough for the wrigglers who come here to be able to read them. And, by the way, those are not in any way fucking legible to the average person who comes through here in any way shape or fucking form.” He looks over his shoulder at you with an annoyed look on his face. You give him your level 3 annoyed glare in return. He drops the look and talks instead. “Well, it's not my fault that my handwriting is so gorgeous,” he says with a pout like a fucking newly hatch wriggler. You glare at him. “Re. Fucking. Do. Them. And this time, make them legible.” He goes back to looking slightly annoyed before turning back and picking up one of the ones he labeled already. “Alright fine, geez Kar, calm down.” You decide to not grace that with an answer and get back to re-labeling vandalized cans.

By the time you finish re-labeling all the cans that were vandalized with swears and dicks, it's only 20 minutes till the end of your shift. You sigh and roll the last cart of re-labeled cans over to the clearance aisle. Aradia started helping out once the customers were gone, nearly an hour after your phone buzzed, but she certainly got them stacked quickly enough. “Alright, this is the last of them. This shift is almost over and WV said I’m not allowed into work tomorrow so let me finish with these cans okay?” Aradia nods, and goes to finish restocking cans with Eridan. You stack the cans in the clearance aisle until you run out of cans. You stick the price label under the cans to say $0.99, with the words ‘vandalized canned foods’ on a piece of paper above the section. Your phone rings again. It's the alarm telling you your shift is over. You turn the alarm off and head to the back to change out of your ‘Safeway’ uniform. You get the feeling you’re going to need this day off.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually made a shift schedule. Why? I don't know. You can look at it if you want https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_r2wYxxRa5_C9H0AUCRGPEzhjNRm51YdtTBitmx4bqQ/edit?usp=sharing


End file.
